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Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

I agree that in thigter formation infantry could easier stop cvalry charge, it is historicaly accurate.
Unfortunately It don't work in game. I've added shield_wall ability to spearmen from Isles and made duels against English mounted sergeants (and later against English mounted knights). After crushing charges against normal formation (even over 30% spearmen lost in one charge, horsmen penetraded deeply my formation) I made few tests with infantry in shieldwall. Initially everything seemed fine-cavalry couldn't pentrate unshakable squere of spearmen. But when I compared casualties, they were same as in case of normal formation! Of course I mean statistically same (about 6-7 tests in each formation).
Try It on your own, maybe I've done still too little tests.
About your battle-It will be great If you saved game before this battle. You will try to fight It same way but in normal formation and compare casualties...

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

Glad to see the system is for the most part, kinda balanced but I want also to point out that for the Lordship of the Isles, their main roster do not have cavalry however in the campaign, they will get access to mercenary cavalry (Irish cavalry notably).

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

Not sure exactly how true this post is but nonetheless it is still a interesting read. It was posted in the Peninsuala Italliaca mod thread but I thought it was worthy of bringing up here as the cavalry in this mod seems to be very, some may say too effective. Perhaps this post can open some debate on the use of cavalry in the time frame of the mod and bring into question the unit stats of cavalry in WotW.

Originally Posted by Titus Vorenus

Hello!

Before I begin, let me first say that I am a tremendous, tremendous fan of this mod. Even at beta, it is absolutely superb, one of the finest I've ever seen for any game. I applaud the modmakers for their obvious hard work and dedication--you are creating something very special here.

With that in mind, I must make a criticism, and that is the behavior of cavalry in this mod. Familiar with how RTW and M2TW have treated cavalry, to be honest I expected little difference in PI--and was vindicated as I played through a Roman Republic campaign, which I have just finished. This is not meant as a critique of the mod team--you are only following precedent.

Unfortunately, that precedent--brought home most spectacularly in the Ride of the Rohirrim in The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King--is absolutely, completely, utterly wrong.

This is because

CAVALRY DO NOT CHARGE!

At least, they do not "charge" in the way that you think they do. Let me explain:

The horse evolved to run away from things--that is how they survived, as they for the most part lack any other defensive mechanism. This is ingrained into the horse so deeply that it simply cannot be overcome. No horse--not even an enraged, trained charger--can be made to run into a solid object. It will veer off, or buck, or most likely simply stop.

Period.

If you have ever seen a steeplechase, then you are seeing this behavior in action. It takes an extremely skilled rider to coach and coax a horse to run towards a fence or other obstacle and leap over it--and even at the highest levels, such as the Olympic Games, this does not always happen.

This becomes even more egregious when you consider that in a battle setting, the solid object the horse is moving towards is almost certainly carrying a sword or, worse, a spear or a pike--i.e., something long and pointy. A horse is not stupid--"pointy"="bad", and no horse can be made to blithely run into an object so obviously dangerous.

This is a lesson well learned by Napoleon. Time and again his cavalry attempted to charge the British infantry squares--and time and again the horses veered off at the last moment, only to be blasted to smithereens by the infantry. To paraphrase the eminent military historian John Keegan in his The Face of Battle (in which he discusses, among much else, everything I've mentioned here, and is a superb read), we often sympathize with the poor British soldiers, but really we should be pitying the French cavalry.

On a similar note, people do not bounce off horses, and horses do not bowl over people. Horses have no instinct to ram--they will kick and even bite, but they're not bulls (or, for that matter, an elephant, which will indeed happily charge into things). Horses--especially domesticated ones, as they are bred for sheer speed--are terribly fragile animals. Even if you managed to get your horse to charge into a person, the impact--particularly if the foe is shielded or armoured--would almost certainly cripple the horse--and kill it, since, as those of you who follow horse racing or raise horses will be all too well aware, a horse with a broken leg is a goner.

This makes more sense if you just visualize it: two groups of horses charging into each other at full speed, or one group charging into steadfast infantry, must undoubtedly utterly devastate everyone involved--and horses, of course, are a valuable, expensive commodity which cannot be wasted so blithely.

To get even more graphic, this explains why English archers historically were able to wipe out French cavalry in droves. Imagine a group of large, powerful horses, with heavily-armoured men wielding shields and swords and lances, charging towards the archers. The archers loose, and their arrows strike some horses, or riders, or both. The stricken and all their paraphrenalia will of course immediately fall to the ground--and then the horse behind it, at top speed, will suddenly crash into the debris--a horse's body, an armoured knight, a lance stuck into the ground--and they in turn will undoubtedly collapse... like a massive highway pileup, except that everything involved is living.

This doesn't happen in RTW or M2TW only because dead bodies have no collision detection--hence, your Feudal Knights are able to happily continue on their way without pause, and cause much choppy death to your Peasant Archers.

Gothmog was exactly right at the Pellenor--pikes in front, archers behind. With the numbers coming towards them (and in way-too-close order, for that matter), it should have been a slaughter.

Want me to ruin the Lord of the Rings movies --and for the record, I love them--further? Watch the Battle of Helm's Deep very closely, as they gallop out of the fortress--you can clearly see the horse's legs go right through the dead bodies as if they weren't even there (which, of course, they weren't).

So, what is cavalry? How is it really deployed? What did a cavalry charge actually look like?

Cavalry are fast, and cavalry are scary.

A horse, even a fully armoured cataphract (which is armoured, incidentally, not to give weight to impact but to survive arrow fire--hence why cataphracts are an Eastern invention), is faster than a person--usually much faster. This gave cavalry far greated tactical flexibility than the infantry. As we know, this makes them superb for flanking manuevers, and as any battle is all about timing, cavalry can go from Point A to Point B faster than anything else on the battlefield--except other cavalry, of course, which is why an examination of historic battles shows that the most common thing cavalry did in battles was... fight other cavalry.

OK, so my cavalry has outflanked the enemy formation--now what? Charge, right? Well, yes--sorta. The point of a cavalry charge is not to actually get the horses to slam headlong into something--as we've established, that just won't happen. The point of a cavalry charge is to scare the living **** out of the infantry.

As we all know, cavalry have always been an elite. Throughout any ancient or medieval society, only a few could afford any kind of horse at all, and even fewer could afford to have a warhorse. Having a warhorse meant having money, and having money meant having power. This naturally caused all infantry to look upon cavalry with a sense of awe--in fact, it still persists to this day.

So, here you are, Mr. Infantryman. You are most likely poor and probably malnourished and exhausted. You probably carry a spear, or if you're lucky a lousy sword, and your shield is either light and small or big and heavy, and you have, oh, maybe a helmet and what is basically a padded sweater.

All of a sudden, you hear the unmistakable, ominous rumble. You look and see a group of huge horses heading towards you at speed. You can see the sunlight reflecting off the riders' fine armour, great swords, massive spears as they continue heading towards you. Your knees quake, your bowels clench--every fiber of your being is telling you to RUN. The veterans are shouting to just "HOLD!", but that's clearly insane because the cavalry is heading towards you and they'll be on you any second now and you know you can't run faster than a horse but maybe they'll get the guy next to you instead and WAIT IS HE RUNNING TOO SO IS EVERYONE ELSE RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN!!!

Cavalry charges do not break infantry by physical impact, but by psychological impact. No horse can stand to run into something, but it is almost as hard to get a man to stand instead of run. And, of course, as soon as the formation breaks apart and is moving away, the horses will cheerfully give chase, since horses are social animals and are ingrained to run in herds. The warrior atop the horse is then free to thrust his long lance or swing his mace into the panicked men vainly fleeing before him.

And let's not even go into the devastation mounted archers (arguably the single best use of cavalry) can cause....

If by "charge" we mean "hit the enemy at speed for physical impact", then elephants charge, and infantry charge, but cavalry do not.

Cavalry manuever around infantry, cavalry scout infantry, cavalry frighten infantry, and--to use an expression familiar to anyone who has played an MMO--cavalry "kite" infantry (either by peppering them with missiles or just by causing the infantry to vainly chase them). But cavalry do not charge into infantry.

Forget everything you've seen in Hollywood and everything you've seen in games. This is really not up for debate.

Therefore, to the PI mod team, if you truly want your otherwise-spectacular mod to be accurate, and if you intend PI to be a realistic depiction of warfare during the rise of the Rome, then I suggest the following changes:

All cavalry--or, at the very least, heavy cavalry--should "Frighten nearby enemy"

To give more impact to this, this might require infantry morale levels to be tweaked.

All cavalry should have their charge values drastically reduced--like, almost nonexistent. Charge values belong to infantry, and the heaviest charge values should belong to hoplites (or elephants, if you choose to introduce them).

Light and medium cavalry should have "Good" morale, and heavy cavalry should have "Excellent" morale. If you're a cavalryman, you're a very lucky person--and your ego is enormous.

All cavalry should be more vulnerable to missiles--a horse is a big target. Heavy cavalry will probably have better armor than infantry, but their defence skills should probably be lower (to represent the horse, which other than bucking--not in the game--is defenseless). Heavy cavalry beats light infantry in melee, but heavy infantry beats heavy cavalry.

To better display their mobility advantages, consider more liberal application of "Fast Moving"--which seemed to me, incidentally, a rare trait for anything as I went through my campaign--and "Good Stamina" and "Very Good Stamina", especially for lighter cavalry.

My credentials, in cause you care: I studied Classics at university, I am a huge reader of military history from John Keegan to Robert Massie, and I am a historical reenactor--my primary impression being Roman.

I hope, then, that you consider what I have said here today--brought, again, not out of malice, but out of a wish to assist--and will introduce changes to cavalry in PI. I recognize that you are all very busy (I've modded RTW myself)), and this will require much balance testing, but your mod will undoubtedly be the better for it.

Thank you for your time.

In my personal opinion I like the way cavalry is in this mod. I like how effective it is and have always been frustrated by mods that had weak cavalry charges. However, if you guys are aiming for historical accuracy and it is in fact true about cavalry then perhaps the mod team would prefer doing some tweaking to unit morale stats. The way Titus Vorenus describes the "real" cavalry charge reminds me of when I send some horses after the enemy's archers and they run once my horses get close but the cavalry runs after them and cuts them down as they flee.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

An interesting reading I must say really, quite special I didn't find it before. +rep.

So let's consider on several aspects I've seen and tried to do in that matter about cavalry.

From the reading, I am on the side of humble Titus about the psychology aspect of the horse which is true (a horse won't charge against something solid, because like a human, you won't charge on a wall (spearmen and the like)).

Regarding the morale, I've seen some people saying the fight doesn't last long enough due by routing. This is has to be expected simply because the majority of the soldiers in the Middle Ages and prior weren't veteran or living for war; they were commoners, farmers forced to fight for their feudal lord and it was quite normal they will rout quickly, especially after a cavalry charge (as Titus said, I would piss on myself if I was a light equipped and more or less trained man in front of horsemen charging towards me). Also, I need to revise it but I've added the frighten_foot attribute to heavy cavalry to represent, within the game's limits, the morale impact of the horsemen.

Unfortunately, the morale cannot be "splitted" when soldiers are meeting footmen or cavalry; it's one single value for both types however adding the above attribute can help to reflect the morale condition.

I've added some additional attack bonuses for ranged units vs archers to represent the crippling effect which can easily kill a horse (as again Titus said, fragile animals) but I may need to play a little with ranged attacks, for the javelins, I believe they are well reflected, for arrows, I would need extra expertise about the average of projectiles soldiers would take before falling (I want to point out that obviously, the arrow that hit a specific body part would kill instantly or within few minutes a man but it's about the aspect of randomness and the most "common" body parts hit).

About the power of the cavalry, I can promise you (someone was expecting that but will answer here) that yes, the heavy cavalry are really dangerous but they will be very few, limited and expensive in the campaign so yes in a custom battle, you can't really balance the whole thing but in the campaign, you will have to take care of them.

Obviously, the game is fast and I have to deal with the game's engine but one thing I would try to change is the common Scottish spearmen to increase their defense vs cavalry because I can't combine the schiltrom formation with the long_pike attribute (they will stand idle otherwise) unless an animator could explain another way to do those changes.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

I have played a few test battles just now and I have noticed a few things about the cavalry charge.

The first I used English Mounted Serjeants against Scottish Dismounted Knights. My cavalry ended up losing the melee battle but my focus was on the result of the initial impact between the two masses.

In the initial impact I had lost only 1 or 2 cavalry and the Knights lost probably a little over a dozen men. I think a change is needed there to increase the amount of losses suffered by both parties in the initial impact for two reasons.

The first being to better represent the gruesome devastation of the two forces colliding at high speed. I imagaine such a collision would have devastating effects on both sides and if the player can spare some horses it would be a good tactic to weaken a good infantry unit like dismounted knights before engaging them with the players weaker infantry.

The second reason, if the player would rather spare it's cavalry, would be to deter the player from charging his horses head on into armored troops. As in the campaign cavalry will be expensive and will be a valuable commodity, making the cavalry more vulnerable during a frontal charge would help prompt players to use cavalry more realistically like charging a flank or the rear instead, which as I noticed doing that works just perfectly to break an already shaken enemy.

Now, my second test was a little mini battle. Another English Mounted Serjeants but this time with supporting archers VS. Scottish Gaisgeach na Gallobha and a unit of Geldons de Schiltrom.

The Gaisgeach and Geldons marched towards my units with the light infantry further in front and the pikemen in the rear, when they got close enough my archers launched a couple volleys at the light infantry while my cavalry walked towards them. About half way to them I set my cavalry to charge, again I was looking to see what the initial impact would look like. This time, it was very one sided. Not one horse dies during the impact and on the other side the infantry lost, my guess, over 80% of it's remaining troops. Surely even against light infantry at least some horse would perish in the massive impact of 100 horses and 200 men. Not only was the collison that one sided but the infantry, who at this point only had about 20 of 200 men still alive, continued to march forward after I sent my horses back! I launched a second charge and completley erased that unit.

Now for the pikemen. I charge my cavalry head on into them and the results where a little different then either of my tests before. It was similar to the Cavalry vs. Knights test though. The pikemen probably lost a bit more men then the Knights did and my cavalry losses where the highest but only about 5 - 10 died, a number I think is still waaayyyy to small. As any veteran of the Battle of Falkirk or the Battle of Golden Spurs would tell you, charging head-on into pikemen or spearmen is a very, very bad idea.

I am however very happy with the cavalry vs. infantry melee. After that first impact the pikemen decimated my cavalry force, so I pulled them back, I let the pikemen march towards my archers, at this point the pikemen where shaken and I then hit them with a cavalry charge to their left flank, with minimal losses on both sides, but the pikemen broke right away and began to flee. That was a result I was very pleased with.

After everything I have read and the Battles I have fought recently I think the only real thing that needs to be changed would be the initial losses suffered by both parties during a cavalry charge. Just try to imagine in your head 150 men standing in formation with either spears thrusting forward or bracing with shield and sword. Now picture 100 horses running towards them at full speed, about 50-60KPH. I would imagine that impact being like a small European car, like Fiat Punto hitting a person at 35-40KPH. Not fun, and like Titus said in his post, everything involved is living.

Of course we are limited to the games engine, so whether cavalry ever in real life would charge head on into a infantry formation or not, we are however playing a video game. Removing the ability to make horses charge as we know it would make cavalry in the game very expensive and well, relatively useless.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

Of course we are limited to the games engine, so whether cavalry ever in real life would charge head on into a infantry formation or not, we are however playing a video game. Removing the ability to make horses charge as we know it would make cavalry in the game very expensive and well, relatively useless.

You view on Mounted War Clerics? They practically don't charge. Their superiority is mobility, armour and damage. If you change the AP damage with frighten nearby unit, then it may be historically interesting.

~Wille

I must tell you here of some amusing tricks the Comte d'Eu played on us. I had made a sort of house for myself in which my knights and I used to eat, sitting so as to get the light from the door, which, as it happened, faced the Comte d'Eu's quarters. The count, who was a very ingenious fellow, had rigged up a miniature ballistic machine with which he could throw stones into my tent. He would watch us as we were having our meal, adjust his machine to suit the length of our table, and then let fly at us, breaking our pots and glasses.

This is the only forum I visit with any sort of frequency and I'm glad it has provided a home for RTR since its own forum went down in 2007. Hopefully my donation along with others from TWC users will help get the site back to its speedy heyday, which will certainly aid us in our endeavor to produce a full conversion mod Rome2.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

Originally Posted by Kjertesvein

You view on Mounted War Clerics? They practically don't charge. Their superiority is mobility, armour and damage. If you change the AP damage with frighten nearby unit, then it may be historically interesting.

~Wille

Can't say I have ever played the Vanilla version of the game, I went straight to mods. So no, I have not seen the mounted war clerics.

What I was meaning is that if we somehow programmed the cavalry to always stop short before colliding with an enemy that would make them not worth the price of buying them. Unless there is a way to have like a 50/50 chance of an enemy unit breaking before the cavalry even makes contact there is not really a point in drastically changing the role of cavalry in game.

However it is always up to the modders. If they feel they can change the morale values enought to get infantry units to break at the mere sight of cavalry then perfect, WotW would forsure be one of the most historically accurate mods out there. If they feel they would like to stick with the current precedent for cavalry charges, all I ask is raise they casualties on the intial contact.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

Emperor: About cavalry charge I don't agree with some things with Titus. My opinion is less radical. I think cavalry could charge, mainly against infantry in looser formation. Against tighter formation and pikes charge was probably also possible but very risky.
I think in such cases, if infatry held position and not escape, most of riders stop charge but not all! For ex. during charge against schiltroms in battle of Falkirk most knights stopped but some tried to penetrate pike formation and... died.
As you've written, the best solution will be to make charge more dangerous for both sides. Unfortunately I'm not sure If It is possible. But even if not, you can imagine that for ex. only 1 or 2 of your mounted sergeants were brave/stupid enough and tried to penetrate dismounted knight's formation, each of them killed for ex. 6 infantrymen (lance hit + powerful impact) but they died. Rest of cavalry were more prudent and stopped charge before too risky impact.
In case of lighter infantry there are gaps between men and horses have space to charge.
I think morale are fine in WOTW, many units have low morale.

Polycarpe: I hope that you will continue our disscusion, I still don't know what do you tink about amount of amunition for archers, stakes for schiltrom speamren and archers and schield_wall ability.
I'm glad to hear that you will change schiltrom spearmen a bit.
In case of availability of heavy cavalry: of course knights and sergeants should be quite rare but rather not less than 10% of armies (I think 10% is good proportion for both England and Scotland).
You should try to change AI a bit, for ex. infantry should use schiltroms/stakes and not move if cavalry charge against them. If not, they will be useless against player's cavalry even If 10 times less numerous.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

So, I was curious about this shield-wall debate and decided to take tests into my hands (using War Of The West). I added shield wall to the Hebridean Nobles and the spearmen. I allowed each to be charged by English Familiars, the best cavalry in the game. Here's what I've found;

Conclusion: Shield wall DOES in fact help defend from cavalry charges, MUCH more than without it (clearly). When one uses the shield wall, they must be careful to watch for flanking maneuvers - the cavalry often attempted this. Also, if the spearmen are engaged with cavalry, they need to be supplemented with some sort of flanking maneuver - whether by heavy infantry or a light cavalry. Also, if using multiple units of spearmen, it is best to array an especially large shield wall, by interlocking each unit together.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

I renewed my tests, this is result:
Terrain - grassy plain, one unit of speamen from Isles vs English mounted sergeants (AI)
In all cases speamen lost battle.
I only corrected position of speamen if cavalry tried to outflank my line.

Spearmen in shield wall, 4 tests:
1) 38%, 43% (battle was ended when I had >20 spearmen)
2) 26%; 52% (battle was ended when I had>20 spearmen)
3) 23%; 85%
4) 34%; 44% (battle was ended when I had >20 speamren)Averaging-30% of my speamen killed in first charge, I killed on avarage 56% of enemy cavalry.
What's interesting 3/4 of battles were ended quite early (I had over 20 man alive when they started to escape)

From these tests It is clear that results are similar no matter if spearmen are in shield wall or normal formation. What's more spearmen in normal formation seems to fight better in melee hence a bit better statistic.

I've also tested speamren vs English bodyguard, in normal formation I've lost 22% in first charge and killed 4 horsemen, in shieldwall I've lost 28% in first charge and killed 5 horsemen.
Again, results are similar.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

Originally Posted by Wareg

Emperor: About cavalry charge I don't agree with some things with Titus. My opinion is less radical. I think cavalry could charge, mainly against infantry in looser formation. Against tighter formation and pikes charge was probably also possible but very risky.
I think in such cases, if infatry held position and not escape, most of riders stop charge but not all! For ex. during charge against schiltroms in battle of Falkirk most knights stopped but some tried to penetrate pike formation and... died.
As you've written, the best solution will be to make charge more dangerous for both sides. Unfortunately I'm not sure If It is possible. But even if not, you can imagine that for ex. only 1 or 2 of your mounted sergeants were brave/stupid enough and tried to penetrate dismounted knight's formation, each of them killed for ex. 6 infantrymen (lance hit + powerful impact) but they died. Rest of cavalry were more prudent and stopped charge before too risky impact.
In case of lighter infantry there are gaps between men and horses have space to charge.
I think morale are fine in WOTW, many units have low morale.

The thing with the cavalry charge is the limitation of what I can do with certain attributes/values. We can agreed that a successful cavalry charge (don't want to be pedantic but I'll use this term to define the whole picture ) is very devastating and several examples could be raised about it.

But let's talk about certain features of all the parties here:

Horses wouldn't charge against a tight formation unless you trick them but covering part of his vision (decreasing his "fear" versus a "wall") however against loosed formation (such as routing troops), the mounts would definitively chase and run with the loosen men.

Protection helps to provide extra "will" to the horse. Horse are fragile and scared animals, if they get wounded, they would (usually) run away but also remember even if they are animals, they can recognize what can be harmful to them (oh pointy spear, you know what? Don't count on me to charge through). However, armored bards provide not only improved mass impact effect but also some extra "confidence" to charge against harmful weapons which is why for example knights were less scared to charge because of their heavy equipment, able to resist several blows/weapons. Same thing with the mount.

Sadly, due to the limitation and the animations, it is impossible to reflect all the aspects of the psychology of the mount (morale, reaction, etc.) but at the same time, we have to reflect the impact of a successful charge (which is again not possible to reflect perfectly, usually, in a real battle, a cavalry charge would be done only once or maybe two because the cavaliers were required to be extremely disciplined and trained to work cooperatively for making the charge without gasps and also to time perfectly and line up the men, oh and did I forgot to tell you the weather and the geographical aspect required for the charge?).

From the tests, I believe I've made the cavalry charge as good as I could but also remember, the demo can't reflect the whole thing because you could get many horsemen as you wish however I can promise you the cavalier type units will be rare, strong but precious.

Polycarpe: I hope that you will continue our disscusion, I still don't know what do you tink about amount of amunition for archers, stakes for schiltrom speamren and archers and schield_wall ability.

Sorry for not answering properly to the above topcis, will do it right now:

Regarding stakes, I will add only this (and we can say it clearly) this powerful attributes only to the factions/cultures that actually used often this defensive trick. If you said the schiltrom spearmen were also using stakes, could you provide a source about it because I've never seen it in Britannia aside Englishmen (especially the archers).

Shield Wall is as Storm said was also a formation the Hebridean (with Norse culture) would have used and I would correct this the next time I'll play with the unit stats but I want to know if of course the spearmen used that formation but what about swordsmen like troops? Did they used that formation as well or it was notably reserved to the spearmen?

And for the ammunition, we can't represent the quiver carriers (not the best name but it explain the roles) but let's also go with certain logics; knocking arrows is a physical exercise but for the longbowmen, it was an intense exercise (psychological and physical). The longbowmen were the medieval machine gunners; a experimented archer would shoot around 10-12 arrows/min. Three minutes of continuous arrow shooting was quite intense, I don't know if you had done bowshooting but I can tell you you get tired quickly and I wasn't shooting at their rate, imagine for them. From what i've read, the amount of arrows carried by the archers were one quiver and about 25-40 arrows which is logical because due to the exertion as well how cumbersome it would be to carry more than that (thanks for the carriers).

I'm glad to hear that you will change schiltrom spearmen a bit.

Will try to do my best within the limits of the game.

In case of availability of heavy cavalry: of course knights and sergeants should be quite rare but rather not less than 10% of armies (I think 10% is good proportion for both England and Scotland).

Don't worry, I will make them rare and making them real "professional nucleus" which is I don't understand than in several mods, cavalry are too easy to acquire plus combined as being strong and cheap, it won't be the case in WotW.

You should try to change AI a bit, for ex. infantry should use schiltroms/stakes and not move if cavalry charge against them. If not, they will be useless against player's cavalry even If 10 times less numerous.

The BAI we are using is Germanicus BAI 5.6, very few modders across the forum have experience with playing with the BAI, just to say, there's more custom building modelers than BAI scripters.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

Originally Posted by Polycarpe

[*]From the tests, I believe I've made the cavalry charge as good as I could but also remember, the demo can't reflect the whole thing because you could get many horsemen as you wish however I can promise you the cavalier type units will be rare, strong but precious.

You don't have to list everything but has lots been changed to the BAI after the release of the demo? Or is what we see in the demo going to be what battles will be like once Britannica campaign is released?

Slightly off topic but all this cavalry talk got me to think of the ultimate thing CA can do with the TW games. I hope soon(hopefully Rome2) CA will finally fully separate cavalry man from horse. So that in a charge the horse may die but the man will simply fall and continue to fight dismounted. I'm sure thats one thing we can all agree on.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

Originally Posted by Polycarpe

Sorry for not answering properly to the above topcis, will do it right now:

Regarding stakes, I will add only this (and we can say it clearly) this powerful attributes only to the factions/cultures that actually used often this defensive trick. If you said the schiltrom spearmen were also using stakes, could you provide a source about it because I've never seen it in Britannia aside Englishmen (especially the archers).

Shield Wall is as Storm said was also a formation the Hebridean (with Norse culture) would have used and I would correct this the next time I'll play with the unit stats but I want to know if of course the spearmen used that formation but what about swordsmen like troops? Did they used that formation as well or it was notably reserved to the spearmen?

During the era when shield-walls were the standard formation of warfare (between the years 450-1066, roughly) any infantry soldier that had a shield could participate in the shield wall, be it sword, axe, or spear. That being said, it is much harder to use swords or axes in a shield wall, being that close together - but it is not impossible. The swordsmen or axemen would often form the very front row of the shield wall, and the spears would often be in the second row to stab over the shoulder of the first row.
Also, shield walls required [at least some] training, so the more semi-professional units should use it, not the less experienced or "levy" type warriors. The Hebridan spearmen would be the lowest tier unit I'd give it to.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

Polycarpe, I really agree with you about charge. As I've written I like cavalry charge in WOTW, although casualties of both sides (charging cavalry and defending infantry) during charge would be higher but I understand that It is difficult to do without unbalancing other factors. But, even with small casualties during charge (for ex. 1-2 horsemen and a dozen of infantry as in Emperor Hantscher's test), we can imagine that such low casualties are cause of caution of charging horsemen (at least most of them).

Regarding stakes, I've written about It on this forum:

If I'm not wrong first deployment of stakes in front of archers in XIV century Europe was battle of Nicopolis in 1396 and English archers firstly used stakes in Azincourt battle, not earlier. However, for ex. during Crecy archers used caltrops and I don't think ''caltrops'' ability is possible to add so stakes seems to be quite good substitute.
About Falkirk and stakes-there are info about It in Polish and English wiki and I've found also painting with them, I will try to send It and finish response in the tomorrow morning http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/schiltron/Falkirk.htm

Regarding shield wall- I know that this ability was popular among Norsemen, I rather mean what do you think about effectiveness of this ability in game (look above, there is test of Heathen Storm and mine).

Regarding shield wall for swordsmen:
In most cases sword wassecondary weapon, not primary. In MTW II there is a big simplification, most of units should have both spear (or 2 handed weapon) and sword/another 1 handed weapon. Unfortunately, in game animation of infantry with 2 weapons (primary and secondary) doesn't work perfectly, so there are 3 ways:
-you can try to improve acting of units with both primary and secondary weapon
-you can replace sword by spear in case of almost all infantry (dismounted knights, sergeants, elite swordsmen) add swords only as decoration
-leave this unnatural division as It is (''swordsmen'' and ''speamren'')
You probably will chose last option so swordsmen should also use shieldwall cause in fact, as Heathen Storm've written, shieldwall was formed by both spearmen and swordsmen/axemen (or spearmen with swords/axes as secondary weapon).

Regarding amunition:

About lenght of battles-archers have probably too many arrows.
I know that even 60-70 arrows were not unusual but even with very slow rate (2 arrows per minute) It took about 30 minutes to loose them all, while battle often took many hours. This is why after loosig all arrows archers frequently started fight in melee (Poitiers, Azincourt).
In my tests I often end battle with only 30-40% of arrows lost, even against armoured enemy so my archers are not needed to fight in melee. 20 arrows seems to be very small amount but maybe It fit better to high dynamism of battles

Now I don't say that archers have too little amunition but too much

The BAI we are using is Germanicus BAI 5.6, very few modders across the forum have experience with playing with the BAI, just to say, there's more custom building modelers than BAI scripters.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

I've tested gisarme infantry with 10 attack and with two times higher delay between attacks (min delay line). They are similar in melee to English geldons and weaker in melee than Gaisgeach cause of low speed of attack, but they are much better against dismounted knights. Maybe this (+higher premium against cavalry) is the way to make them more useful than now? It also will be historicaly accurate cause gisarme was heavy weapon and nobody could wave them too frequently but accurate blow of that weapon was rather lethal.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

In my opinion I think battles are a bit too fast. I prefer slower more tactical battles. If I had to suggest a way to obtain this I would say raise the moral of most of the units a few points perhaps. Currently in battles i just up every units experience to at least one silver chevron and I think that improves things. Otherwise I think the unit balancing is enjoyable. Oh, and i really like the way the archers fire, it's kinda like platoon firing instead of just large synchronized volleys.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

Don't necessarily agree with public poll as it alters results, but anyway I think the system is somewhat flawed. The battles are short affairs with a few cavalry charges and I barely have to use tactics even when outnumbered. The range of unit size between heavy infantry to light infantry is unhistorically large. Cavalry unit sizes are too big, one reason why they're overpowered. Also 2handed spearmen and heavy inf/cavalry move too fast. Casualties occur too quickly (may be my personal opinion don't know what others think). I think defense skill is too high for heavy infantry/cavalry. If both attack of Spearmen(they'll still keep their cav bonus) and defense skill of medium/ heavy inf and cav is lowered, it would be more balanced.

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

Alright, I will not reply to everyone but will give my personal opinion on the general matter that is the unit balance.

First off, I want to thank you guys that voted to give me the opportunity to see the result of hours of organizing the unit balance, it may look ridiculous or easy-to-do thing but in order to make a good balance, we need lots of testing and revision. From the poll, I can see most people appreciate the balance which makes me happy but I've read your comments and your suggestions which I will take them into consideration (even the one that are somewhat cold but that's okay, I can deal with criticisms).

Therefore, I am planning to do a major revision on unit organization, stats, equipment, etc. Not due by only the remarks made by the members but also by me because I wasn't totally satisfied with the final result which why I'll redo the whole stuff and making a new guide. You will have the opportunity to test it out when we will release the Earldom of Orkney preview and the patch for the demo (that's right, we will actually update the demo so you can play with the new models). I hope the next update will make not only me but also you more satisfied but again, thank you for giving feedback, it's really appreciated!

Re: [Fans' Opinion] Custom Battle Demo Unit Balance

Originally Posted by Polycarpe

Alright, I will not reply to everyone but will give my personal opinion on the general matter that is the unit balance.

First off, I want to thank you guys that voted to give me the opportunity to see the result of hours of organizing the unit balance, it may look ridiculous or easy-to-do thing but in order to make a good balance, we need lots of testing and revision. From the poll, I can see most people appreciate the balance which makes me happy but I've read your comments and your suggestions which I will take them into consideration (even the one that are somewhat cold but that's okay, I can deal with criticisms).

Therefore, I am planning to do a major revision on unit organization, stats, equipment, etc. Not due by only the remarks made by the members but also by me because I wasn't totally satisfied with the final result which why I'll redo the whole stuff and making a new guide. You will have the opportunity to test it out when we will release the Earldom of Orkney preview and the patch for the demo (that's right, we will actually update the demo so you can play with the new models). I hope the next update will make not only me but also you more satisfied but again, thank you for giving feedback, it's really appreciated!